Top Ten Tuesday | Most Intimidating Books

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Ayn Rand, books, Dark Tower, don quixote by miguel de cervantes, james joyce, JD Salinger, literature, Miguel de Cervantes, roberto bolano, salman rushdie, satanic verses by salman rushdie, stephen king, Thomas Pynchon, Top Ten Tuesday, ulysses by james joyce, virginia woolf

This meme is brought to you by The Broke and the Bookish. Today’s topic is the top ten most intimidating books that we all dread to read for one reason or another. Here is my list of titles:

1. Ulysses by James Joyce – I will feel like a complete failure/idiot if I cannot get through this book in one sitting. Especially since it is THE most important book in modern literature. EVER. *shudders*
2. The Waves by Virginia Woolf – Sometimes Woolf can be completely incomprehensible to me. Her writing is like a strange melody with a hidden beat. I have to hunt for the damn thing in all the dense foliage of her prose. ‘The Waves’ completely baffled me and I wound up running to the nearest exit to this weird labyrinth of fiction.
3. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes – The sheer size of it puts me off. It lives on the shelf next to Milton’s Paradise Lost.
4. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger – I really don’t know why people call this a great novel. Never really saw it myself. Intimidating when you can’t see what millions of others can.
5.  Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon – He is so awesome. ‘The Crying of Lot 49‘ changed my taste in books drastically. It was also one of the hardest damn books I’d ever read. What if I don’t get this one?
6. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand – The books scares me (sheer size), Ayn Rand scares me (have you seen her?) OMIGOD.
7. 2666 by Roberto Bolano – I have a love/hate relationship with Bolano. I keep expecting the same kind of pleasure I get when I read Borges but get confused when I don’t. Confused and angry. Not quite the same as intimidated, but…
8. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie – So much controversy around this novel. What if I end up hating it? Will it cost me a well-respected author?
9. House of Leaves by M.Z. Danielewski – I read this once before. I don’t think I’ll read it again anytime soon. I have never been so scared of words and the things they can unravel both within and without. Danielewski is king. I grovel at his feet.
10. The Dark Tower series by Stephen King – A mammoth seven book series that I have only briefly dipped into. I don’t know if I can last the distance…

That’s my list of intimidating books guys. How about yours? Are there any above that scare the bejesus out of you? Would you add to the list?

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Mailbox Monday & It’s Monday, What Are You Reading? (25/ 7)

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benjamin zephaniah, carlos ruiz zafon, cats cradle, charlotte perkins gilman, civil war, emila zola, herman hesse, ian fleming, irvine welsh, Its monday what are you reading?, jm barrie, kurt busiek, kurt vonnegut, margaret atwood, mark millar, marvels, matt moylan, meme, mohsin hamid, patricia melo, Paul Auster, Paul Gallico, paul jenkins, peter pan, raymond carver, roberto bolano, siddhartha, stephen galloway, streetfighter world warrior encyclopedia, the angel's game, the cellist of sarajevo, the dream, the guernsey literary and potato peel pie society, the skating rink, the spy who loved me, the year of the flood, the yellow wallpaper, trainspotting, violette leduc, wolverine origins

Welcome to Monday Meme’s! (‘Mailbox Monday’ by Marcia at The Printed Page and ‘It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?’ by Sheila at The Book Journey are fun weekly meme’s that allow book-bloggers to share their reading progress and the books they have yet to read.

July has been a hectic month, but also fruitful in terms of books. Since I haven’t had time to post that often (due to my novel-writing) I’m taking this opportunity to pick up from where I left off in March. Here’s a review of the titles that have either wowed me, or left me a little disappointed:

Books Read | March/ April
(click for reviews)
Lost World by Patricia Melo (1/5)
Man in the Dark by Paul Auster (5/5)
Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolano (4/5) – review pending
Kung Fu Trip by Benjamin Zephaniah (3/5)
The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico (5/5)
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid (3/5) – review pending
The Informers by Brett Easton Ellis (3/5) – review pending
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis (1/5) – review pending
The Paper House: A Novel by Carlos Maria Dominguez (4/5) – review pending

Books Read | May/ June
(click for reviews)
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse (4/5) – review pending
2BR02B by Kurt Vonnegut (5/5)
The Lady and the Little Fox Fur by Violette LeDuc (1/5)
Peter Pan by JM Barrie (5/5)
The Yellow Wall-paper and Other Stories by Charlotte Gilman (4/5)
Beginners by Raymond Carver (5/5)
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (4/5)
The Dream by Emile Zola (5/5) – review pending
The Cellist of Sarajevo by Stephen Galloway (5/5)

 Other reviews:
The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (4.5/5)

Books Read | July
Streetfighter: World Warrior Encyclopedia by Matt Moylan (4/5)
Marvels by Kurt Busiek (5/5)
Wolverine: Origins by Paul Jenkins (3/5)
Civil War by Mark Millar (3/5)
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (5/5)

Currently Reading/ August Outlook

 

What a pick-n-mix! As someone who never just reads one book at a time, I’ve started off first with Bolano’s “The Skating Rink”, which is a strange mix of romance, political scamming, figure-skating and cold-blooded murder. This is my second Bolano book (gearing myself up for ‘2666’) and the story seems to be chugging along quite well, despite the weird elements he’s thrown together to make it. Meanwhile I’m also poking around in “Trainspotting”, which unbeknownst to me is written in a very thick Scottish accent! I’m slowly getting used to it (fitba = football, hame = home, jaykits = jackets). It would be useful to have a glossary, but on second thought might spoil all the fun. After all, the best thing about ‘The Clockwork Orange’ was the strange Russian street lingo.

The one I can’t let go of at the moment is “The Spy Who Loved Me”. It is quite cheesy (as most Fleming books are) and it does feel a lot like one of those guilty comfort reads. The Bond of the movies and the Bond of the novels are so very different! However if there is one book I class as top-grade reading material, it is the Atwood. I practically have to ration her out for fear of guzzling through her entire works. She is so AMAZING! “The Year of the Flood” is the second in the MaddAddam trilogy, the first being ‘Oryx and Crake’, and loosely follows on from it. I can’t wait to lose myself in the plot. Can’t imagine what Atwood has dreamed up for us dystopian fiction lovers. Oh bliss…

What are you planning to read this week?

Related articles

• Review: Kurt Vonnegut: Letters by Kurt Vonnegut (edited and with an introduction by Dan Wakefield) (stephenormsby.wordpress.com)

Quick Review | ‘Amulet’ – Roberto Bolaño

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amulet, book review, Latin America, literature, Mexico, Pedro Garfias, poetry, roberto bolano, south american

Amulet by Roberto Bolaño

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“This is going to be a horror story. A story of murder, detection and horror. But it won’t appear to be, for the simple reason that I am the teller. Told by me, it won’t seem like that. Although, in fact, it’s the story of a terrible crime.”

And so begins the awkward, hallucinatory tale of Auxiliano Lacouture; the narrator of our story and self-proclaimed ‘mother of Mexican poetry‘. The story begins neither here nor there,but winds itself around people, events and fragmented memories like a kite driven by a wayward wind. Lacouture’s erratic narrative comes to rest on odd moments between art and people as Bolano tries to express the deep, subliminal messages sent and received by poets and their poetry.

“I am the mother of Mexico’s poets. I am the only one who held out in the university in 1968, when the riot police and the army came in… I stayed there with a book by Pedro Garfias.”

The story itself is loosely anchored around the drastic events of 1968, when the government ordered the storming of all state Universities, including the one Lacouture attends. Suddenly Lacouture finds herself trapped alone in the lavatory on the fourth-floor of the university, where she stays for 12 days without food or water. With nothing but a poetry book and her own memories, Lacouture begins to deconstruct events, recalling, rewinding and often going forward in time to piece together this unlikely ‘horror story’.

Part stream-of-consciousness, part feverish prophecy; the story unfolds as a metaphor for the confusion and rage that swells in the heart of Mexican poetry. Poets dead and alive populate the narrative, adding to the confused, collective cacophony of a country that rests on political turmoil. Amongst this, Lacouture emerges from the lavatory as a heroine, and is hailed by professors and students alike as a champion of literary art. She becomes a living legend, but her solitary confinement has opened a mystical door inside her. She had become a muse, a ‘Calliope’, as her eyes begun to see the power of poetry beyond the page, as she sees the army of the dead marching towards the unknown.

“And I heard them sing. I hear them singing still, faintly, even now that I am no longer in the valley, a barely audible murmur, the prettiest children of Latin America, the ill-fed and the well-fed children those who had everything and those who had nothing, such a beautiful song it is… I heard them sing and I went mad.

And although the song I heard was about war, about the heroic deeds of a whole generation of young Latin Americans led to sacrifice, I knew that above and beyond all, it was about courage and mirrors, desire and pleasure.
And that song is our amulet.”

The quote above is the last paragraph and neatly ties up the ideology that drives this book which was pretty sketchy to begin with. The roundabout telling of the story and it’s incongruence sometimes frustrated me. But something inside me told me to keep reading on. Somewhere in there is a method to the madness, it glimmers through the tangle of voices the novel is composed from. I would say a re-read is in order if I am to truly understand that method.

View all my reviews

August 2010 Reading Round-Up!

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arthur conan doyle, ford madox ford, khaled hosseini, meme, roberto bolano, Xiaolu Guo

It’s that time again where I post the books I’ve managed to read over the past month, and this time I think I’ve not done so well. Anyway, here it is; a grand total of *drumroll* 5 books. Oh the humiliation…

A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini (4/5)
The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford (4/5)
The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (3/5)
Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth – Xiaolu  Guo (4/5)
Amulet – Roberto Bolano (3/5)

It’s been a mixed one this month and not bad by the look of the ratings. Out of the five read, ‘Twenty Fragments’ was the most enjoyable. There was a fresh, crisp quality to Guo’s writing that awoke very deep emotions within me about youth. Guo managed to capture the moment a child turns into an adult and opens their eyes and their heart to the devastating fragility of life. Roberto Bolano’s ‘Amulet’ also relates loosely to the passage of time, growing up and realisation, but is written in a more metered, measured way. Bolano’s novel has none of the savage immediacy of Guo’s; which can only be credited to the fact that she was only barely twenty herself when she wrote it.

August was supposed to be a month of reading exclusively from my ever-growing TBR list. Not only that, it was also a chance to tackle those ‘classics’ that have been lying around gathering dust for god knows how long (not to mention to relieve myself of being one of those pretentious readers who display classic books on their shelves just to look clever!) 

But my plans for the month did go very much awry, as my powers of concentration mysteriously took leave of me. This has taught me a  lesson not to be so ambitious! Oh, and just for the record, I’m still dragging myself through Madame Bovary three weeks since I began it and I’ve put the other titles I planned to read back on the shelf. But this doesn’t spell defeat, oh no, I’ve figured out the best way to get through that awful little pile is to ‘sandwich’ read. Yep! That’s when you begin 3 books at once. Requirements are as follows: two titles must be of the irresistible page-turner variety and the last one (the undesirable) you wedge between the other two. You make a pledge to read 50 pages a day of only one book and rotate the books one for each day. By the time you know it, you’ve gotten through the damn thing, or so you hope. So far this literary placebo plan has worked very well. I manage to keep to the 50-page promise which gets me through books surprisingly quick.

Well, that’s that for August, how did you do? September is already upon us, here’s wishing everyone good reading for the months ahead!

Teaser Tuesday | In Which Bolano Introduces Us to the ‘Mother of Mexican Poetry’…

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roberto bolano, teaser tuesday

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Today’s teaser is from the late Chilean author Roberto Bolano, and comes from his short novel ‘Amulet’, page 43.

“But one thing stopped me from going crazy: I never lost my sense of humour.
I could laught at my skirts, my stovepipe trousers, my stripy tights, my white socks, my page-boy hair going whiter by the day, my eyes scanning the nights of Mexico City, my pink ears attuned to all the university gossip: the rises and falls, who got put down, who got passed over, who was sucking up to whom, the stars of the day, the inflated reputations, rickety beds that were taken apart and reassembled under the convulsive sky of the Mexico City, that sky I knew so well, that restless, unattainable sky, like an Aztec cooking pot, under which I came and went, just happy to be alive, with all the poets of Mexico City and Arturito Belano, who was seventeen years old, then eighteen, I could practically see him growing.”

As befits an artist, Bolano became renowned with his posthumous work ‘2666’ that was finished just before his death in 2003. Shortly after, he was declared a ‘literary phenomenon’. Like most South American authors, his style veers towards elements of magical realism and has a haunting quality that plays with notions of time and space.